6 THOUGHTS ON “Stuff That’s Hard to Do (Starship First Test Flight)”

• oops, though if it was considered a success for just clearing the tower, it was a success. it did more than that.

  • I agree. I was not disappointed at all. They’ll figure out what went wrong and will try again. They’ll be launching scheduled starship flights waaaaay before Blue not Origin. 🤔😇😊

• Not bad at all for a first test flight. Seems the first stage did fine. Lessons learned. Keep it up!

• Still love seeing this just like it was the late 60’s all over again.

  “He who dares wins”

• If you look very carefully, frame by frame, you can see the HPUs (hydraulic Power Units) being destroyed. The HPUs provide hydraulic power to steer the engines, operate the grid fins (for re-entry), and also run the clamps that hold Starship to the booster!
  No steering, no clamp release. The FTS (Flight Termination System) finally determined after three loops that the ship was wandering off the flight path… computer said, “Nope!” and triggered the FTS.

  The launch was WILDLY successful, as it reached Max Q, and also survived looping which most rockets can’t do!! The moment arm of a 400 foot rocket is tremendous, and yet it held together. Incredible.

  The launch pad is a mess, it gouges a 20-30 foot pit and tossed concrete, rocks (few) and sand over 5 miles!! Well, the sand anyway.

  Diagnose, redesign, rebuild, retest. Booster 9 and Ship 26 are actually only a week away from being fully built. I might also mention that this booster/ship was an earlier design with earlier engines, etc. – the steering and stuff are now electric-powered! Lots more improvements, mostly minor stuff but still important.

  I can hardly WAIT!!!!!!!!

  • Good observations, thanks.

    Yeah, I was truly impressed by the stack’s integrity during the tumble,
    although it did bend during the tumble.

    Launch pad repair looks like the long pole to another flight, here.
    Kind’a figgered it’d take a hit, but this…

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